Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Collection

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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born in Florence on April 3, 1895 and died in Los Angeles, California on March 16, 1968. After training at the Florence Conservatory, he gained prominence in Italy between the World Wars. He was forced to relocate to the United States in 1939 when the Facists began persecution of Jews, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1946. While perhaps best remembered at present for his solo guitar music, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed in many genres and media, including among his works operas and oratorios, orchestral music, music for films, cantatas, concertos, music for solo piano, music for various bowed string instruments, for harp, ballets, choral music, and chamber music, among other items (see Nick Rossi's Catalogue of Works by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1977), for a nearly complete list of compositions). Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a two-volume autobiography covering his life up to 1961, "Una vita di musica," (unpublished, in the USC collection).